Chutian Wang

Instructor: Rachael Ball

Writing 2

29 June 2022

Multilingualism, Our Way Out? – A Podcast by Scholars

Meeting

Host – As our society develops towards an increasingly globalized and diverse

paradigm, we inevitably get involved with people who speak familiar languages but in
slightly different ways. I’m sure our viewers, being scholars around the world, must
have some interactions with people who speak a little different then you do. Have you
ever thought that someone sound a bit “off” or have you ever felt week speaking in your
accent? Some argue that it is a good phenomenon that we can use a common language
to communicate while others argue against it. As our perceptions and biases on cultures
and languages usually form before we reach adulthood, such debate in the field of
education has been around as well. Today we have invited a group of professionals from
a range of linguistic related studies to address this issue in various perspectives.

Stephany Dunstan – I’m glad you mentioned education and, of course, as you said, one
of our current goals is to ensure a healthy diversity and inclusion in education and
provide our next generation with a better lingual environment. I have conducted
research on the influence of speaking a stigmatized dialect on white and African
American students. It turns out the approaches we employ in education can really make
a difference. (Dunstan and Jaeger, 796-798)

Stephen Barbour – Across many seemingly different cultures, the argument of standard
language and a multilingual environment exists. It sometimes even occurs to us that it
might be the languages or dialects that separates cultures, regional identities, and social
classes.

Host – Is this a big issue in all parts of the world? I’d imagine that it is common to have
stigmatized dialects or languages in most countries or even regions within a country,
right?

R. K. Agnihotri – That is true. I personally study such problems in India and Asia in
general, Dr. Dunstan here has done some research in the US, and Dr. Stephen Barbour
focused on West Germany in the 80th. There are indeed many such studies in our field.
We can confidently say that this is a very global issue.

James Milroy – Yes, we should agree that this is a far-reaching topic. But before we
dive into the details, I’d like to share some general information and terminologies about
language ideologies and standardization. You know, it’s not until recently did our
society become woke and progressive as today. Before that happened there was a high
level of what is almost an obsession with uniformity and correctness, especially when
it comes to language. We believed that there is always a “correct” form of speech, and
in some regions today this belief continues and might even worsen. It is in these
standard language cultures where people tend to associate negative attitudes towards
those who speak exotic dialects. (Milroy, 530-533)

Host – Sorry to interrupt here but what would you categorize as a correct Language,
and what is a standard language culture?

Milroy – Ah, I was about to explain this. I believe most of my colleges here would agree
that there are many cultures in which a majority of people believe that there is a standard
language, namely English, French, Spanish, etc. We call these cultures standard
language cultures. It is really interesting how we consider something to be correct. We
acquire these notions later in life, but it is so innate that we can immediately detect it
when someone is using a language in its non-standard form. Ask any British person
what a shop that sells beers is called, they will immediately respond with the word
“pub”, but an American would say a “bar”. If you are in Britain, “pub” would then be
considered as “standard”, and vice versa. It turns out just like the previous example that
there is a high level of association with the particular cultural group and the dialect they
speak, which as you can imagine has serious consequences. (Milroy, 535-536)

Host – and what are those consequences?

Milroy – Well in my studies, it is usually the minority group that suffers the negative
consequences, discrimination that manifests in many social statuses, classism, etc., and
in these stigmatizations sometimes display different characteristics given different
sociological context. You see, people associate negative notions to people who speak a
“non-standard language” because we think the “standard language” is a superior
language, and thus whoever does not use it is inferior. We might dismiss this logic easily
because we think that we do not discriminate against people that way. But this is a
systematic, underlying notion that basically can’t be avoided. It is so deeply planted
into our behavior that we don’t realize we are doing it, just like we don’t realize we are
breathing. (Milroy, 530-555)

Agnihotri – I absolutely agree with Dr. Milroy here. I really like your quote from
Roosevelt that critically demonstrates the strong association we have between groups
of people and the languages they speak. “We have room but for one language here and
that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out
as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house”
To add to the despair, I believe the more we pursuit happiness and a better world, the
more these problems manifest, another reason we need to address this issue urgently
with improvements in education as our industrial society develops ever so quickly.
(Agnihotri, 80-81)

Host – how is this addressed in India?

Agnihotri – Well it might sound irrational that the assumption was that poor people
need not education but only literacy. It was thought that literacy is the basis to
understanding the simplest of sociolinguistic ideas. Recently we have found that over
75% of states of the Indian Union require their children to learn English, the “standard
language” from Class 1, similar to many other Asian countries. (Agnihotri, 83-84) It is
clear that in these countries English is not their mother tongue.

Dennis E. Baron – Teaching a second language in schools is also sometimes associated

with providing a universal and “elite” dialect. You could probably see why I used the
word elite. In many of these societies where people are separated by class, as can be
reflected by Dr. Agnihotri and Dr. Barbour’s researches, people used to tackle problems
associated with multilingualism by eradication, which necessarily led to consequences
like structural discrimination, also highlighted in Dr. Milroy’s research. In my time, we
needed to deal with more practical problems that non-standard speakers face in college,
very much like the situation in India today. It should be noted very importantly that,
despite the common beliefs, the “inferior” dialects have their own systems that are not
at all nonsensical. (Baron, 179) Are we to say that white American English is the
“correct language”? Does it even make sense to promote a “standard language”?

Host – I totally agree! I mean, let’s be honest, we must all have assumed, or at least
thought that someone might be less capable because of the way they talk. Certainly, this
is bad, and we shouldn’t do that, but it is probably hard to not think this way even if
you know you have biases. You know, it’s a subconscious matter. Is there a way around
this? Should we probably just introduce a “standard language” and have everybody use
it?

Agnihotri – In India, having long promoted English as a “standard language”, we

realized that English as a standard language can actually only survive when there are
other languages accompanying it. That is to say, English as a standard language is
incapable of taking over as our only means of communication. (Agnihotri, 84) Yes, we
might see a spread of English in our diverse language base in India due to globalization,
but this society might stay permanently multilingual. Kids will learn English as they
grow up; businesspeople will use English to sell their goods; scientists will use English
to write down their findings… That all coexists with the other dialects we speak, either
Indian English or our own languages. An equal overwhelming presence of English and
Multilingualism constitutes the Indian education system. Perhaps we should focus on
landing a good balance.

Dunstan – I am pleased to see that India is going towards this multilingual paradigm.
In education, it is true that the dialect you use can have a significant influence on the
behavior of yourself and others surrounding you. Even if we allow students to use
different dialects in class, they still might feel less comfortable expressing their ideas
in their own language, especially for those who use a stigmatized dialect. I will quote
one of the students we cooperated with in SSU, “And they [peers at SSU] hear you talk
and they’ve never heard somebody talk like that and they automatically write you off
as being, you know, less intelligent than they are.” (Dunstan and Jaeger, 794) You can
see the kind of pressure they are feeling, not great for a teenager who is still developing
a healthy self-image. The alternative should seem obvious now, all we really need to do
is to educate students and the educators alike, as I agree with Dr. Milroy even the
scholars themselves are not immune to the rooted misinformation, the concept of
lingual diversity and inclusion. It is not the language or the dialect that is problematic,
it’s the association we make.

Barbour – Well said. We should agree that the dialects aren’t at fault. In Germany, a
class divided country, people associate the dialects that each other speak with social
class, and hence their status. What’s even more alarming, we found that the restriction
on the use of dialects can sometimes result from the attitude of the dialect speakers
themselves. Like the situation in India, as Dr. Agnihotri described. It is arguably
advantageous for school children to learn a standard language. But that is not so that
they can communicate more accurately or efficiently, as our results show that the
problems that arises generally have no connection to any inherent inability to adapt to
the language, it is rather so that they can feel more confident and escape the prejudice
that are imposed on them. (Barbour 241-242)

Host – That sound like an agreement. Have we come to a conclusion then?

All – *Discourse*

Host – It seems like even if we have reached an agreement there are still many issues
to be addressed. For example, how should the education system adapt is these changes
were made? How would we change the already existing stereotypes? With yet another
informative but not entirely conclusive discussion we shall end our podcast today.
Thank you for listening!

References
Agnihotri, R. K. "Towards A Pedagogical Paradigm Rooted In
Multilinguality". International Multilingual Research Journal, vol 1, no. 2, 2007,
pp. 79-88. Informa UK Limited, https://doi.org/10.1080/19313150701489689.

Barbour, Stephen. "Dialects And The Teaching Of A Standard Language: Some West
German Work". Language In Society, vol 16, no. 2, 1987, pp. 227-
243. Cambridge University Press (CUP),
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500012276.

Baron, Dennis E. "Non-Standard English, Composition, And The Academic

Establishment". College English, vol 37, no. 2, 1975, p. 176. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/375063.

Dunstan, Stephany Brett, and Audrey J. Jaeger. "Dialect And Influences On The
Academic Experiences Of College Students". The Journal Of Higher Education,
vol 86, no. 5, 2015, pp. 777-803. Informa UK Limited,
https://doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2015.0026.

Milroy, James. "Language Ideologies And The Consequences Of

Standardization". Journal Of Sociolinguistics, vol 5, no. 4, 2001, pp. 530-
555. Wiley, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00163.